Customer Reviews

The Patience Stone

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

It was difficult for me to think of a good word to describe this short novel, but "unsettling" seems to capture it. Great works of literature are great because they make us uncomfortable, challenge us, and broaden our horizons. "The Patience Stone" accomplishes this in a surprisingly short, but impactful book. I read through it in one sitting; it was so intense at times I wanted to pull away from it, but couldn't.

It's the story of a nameless Afghan woman who is tending to her husband. He is suffering from a wound he endured, apparently, in one of the ongoing tribal conflicts in the country. He is considered a hero, a soldier of jihad. His wound has left him alive, but silent and unmoving. His wife tends to him and prays for him, but progressively becomes more frustrated with the hopelessness of her situation.

The novel never leaves the room in which the man lies. The setting captures the narrow world of the Afghan woman as she is largely confined to the home. As the woman begins to lose her patience, she starts to confide in her husband as he becomes an embodiment of the legendary patience stone. She gradually unfastens the chains of expectation as she reveals her true thoughts and feelings to her husband for the first time-- sometimes sad, sometimes rageful, and sometimes with surprising secrets that she has kept. The volume of her emotion rises to a powerful crescendo and a climax that is ambiguous and thought-provoking.

The author wastes no words; each sentence is written with grace and precision. It's a powerful novel that seeks to give voice to women in Afghanistan. Very highly recommended.

I'm struck by two things with this short book. The first is that it would be a great book for a women's study class IF it were written by a woman. Unfortunately it is written by a man who is giving us a woman's perspective on one of the most brutal and oppressive societies. In a way, it kind of cheapens the reading experience. The second thing that struck me is that this is a good start for getting alternative voices heard in the publishing world. We need more literature like this from places like Afghanistan. I'm reminded of the writings that coincided with womens suffrage in the US begining in the 1800's, and the writings that came out of the sexual revolution in the 1960's (not that I embrace a lot of this later literature!)

If you like metaphorical writing, The Patience Stone is your treasure trove. Some of the symbolism was easy to catch, other things I could only guess at. It is so easy to see this produced as a play, but the subject matter is almost too disturbing to be experienced in anywhere other than your favorite place to read.

It is well worth the read for anyone who wants to be there as a pebble is dropped into a pond. If women are given a chance at freedom in Afghanistan, a tempest will arise that the world has not seen the likes of in a long while. This is perhaps a reason why the women are so oppressed...the oppressors fear reprisal.

Could so little be said and yet you have lived a life time after reading this slim book? Wow, what amazing story telling, where the author kept the props very simple and everything was focused on what the woman revealed to us through her daily and repetitive routine, her conversation with her husband (who for all we know was paralysed by a flying bullet) and the background noise from the war. very powerful portrayal of life in a war torn city, religious observations, suppression of women's rights; more importantly, the explosion of emotions, guilt of past and present actions that came pouring out of the woman in a coherent and chronological order of her life. To do to stay alive and an ending you just could not believe: I jumped out of my skin. Gutsy and powerful.

This simple epigram sets the stage for this very unusual and powerful story: it is both personal, even intimate, and wide-reaching in substance and relevance. At the centre of all comings and goings is one room where a woman attends to her wounded husband. A photo of him on the wall identifies him as a combatant for one of the fighting factions in an ongoing war. The sounds of gunfire, of tanks near-by smashing house walls and of men shouting -far or close by - regularly break into the room's silence where the woman is also deep in thought and prayer. The woman goes about her nursing routines, leaves the room to speak to her young daughters somewhere down the passage, comes back, refreshes the feeding tube, washes her husband's motionless body and, settling back beside him, continues counting her prayer beads while reciting one of the ninety-nine names of God. If it were not for his quiet regular breathing, one would think the man had died already...

In a language that is at the same time simple, spare and compressed, yet often poetic, Rahimi evokes the atmosphere in the room that is both calm and serene and, nonetheless, held in suspense by tensions lingering below the surface. As readers we feel like intimate observers of a domestic tragedy, yet at the same time, through the special lens that the room provides we can perceive the desolation and brutality of the outside world. Slowly, in sensitively conveyed step, the reader learns to understand the hard life of the woman, her family and background and also the intricacies of a society torn apart by tradition and power struggles. The woman opens her heart, expressing her deepest held thoughts to her man who cannot answer but might well hear her. She discovers a new strength in herself as she applies the symbolism of the black stone, "sang-e-sabour", the patience stone, to her situation: the stone that absorbs all the confessions of the believers... Encouraged by this new understanding, she makes her man such a silent listener, her very personal patience stone. The more she shares her thoughts aloud, the more she spells out all the sufferings, pain, anger, and suppressed wishes that women in her society have been experiencing. The reader empathizes with her as she gains in strength and confidence, finally revealing the deepest secrets of her life. She feels a burden lifting from her heart, freed from all the strains that held her down. Where does the story lead to? A conclusion that is both shocking and consistent.

Much of what is conveyed is expressed as the woman's monologue, a tragic story, exquisitely and forcefully imagined by the author. Rahimi does not give the woman nor any other character a name to underline his intent of demonstrating general validity of his character's story. It is an indictment to women's suppression anywhere. Nevertheless, the story is very personable and as a reader we can relate to the woman's individuality and predicament. The events in the room and beyond are so vividly portrayed that one can visualize the scenes and easily imagine a film.

Written originally in French, Polly McLean's translation is fluid and perceptive. Khaled Hosseini's introduction to the slender volume is a very good resource for context and importance of this book. With this novel, film producer and writer, Atiq Rahima deservedly won the renowned (French) Prix Gouncourt in 2008. Rahimi is Afghani, and having fled his home country during the Taliban regime, settled in France, He returned to Afghanistan in 2002, where he currently works on the film version of THE PATIENCE STONE. [Friederike Knabe]

I'll start with the good. The book had a very interesting premise. I has not heard of Sang-e Saboor before, but I like the idea of it. And, I think that Rahimi's application of it (a woman speaking to her incapacitated husband) was quite interesting, especially in the context of a relationship that does not typically include this level of personal honesty and sharing.

I found parts of The Patience Stone to be very moving. There were passages that were emotionally compelling, passages that taught me something about Islamic culture, and one or two passages with some suspense. I would even go so far as to say that there were enough of those passages in the book (relative to its overall length) to make a good book. Unfortunately, clunky writing (and, perhaps, translation) got in the way.

I also appreciated it's brevity and it's flow. In addition to being short, the book read quite quickly. I liked this not just because I was ambivalent about my overall feelings towards the book but also because a lot of what happens in the book is really terrible. I'm not sure I could have made it through 300-400 pages of such depressing narrative.

Now, on to the bad... Throughout the book, I found myself distracted by not very good writing. Some of it was just word choice, which might be attributed to the translator, but often it was clearly a problem carried through from the French. One example of this that came up repeatedly was the narrator attempts to get inside the woman's head. Rahimi uses a third-person point of view to keep us out of the protagonist's head and make her revelations to her husband more powerful (I think this was a smart decision). But in several passages, the narrator tries to intrude on her thoughts by interpreting her actions for the reader. I don't know if that example really makes sense when I describe it, but I think you'll see what I'm talking about if you do choose to read it.

I also felt at times like the writer was trying too hard to write something "important" or shocking. There were parts in the book where Rahimi seems to push it a bit further than necessary. Although I was never offended (others might be), I felt a few times like Rahimi had made passages more graphic than necessary in an attempt to shock.

I will also I had no idea what to make of the ending. I don't know if it was real or a dream. Although endings like that don't always bother me, it didn't seem to fit with the rest of the book.

Title The Patience Stone
Author
Hosseini, Khaled
Atiq Rahimi
Rating ****1/2
Tags fiction, women, afghanistan, war




Short book, long scream.
That's a flippant but relatively accurate picture of this book. The flippancy comes as a reaction to shield one's self from the brutal amount of pain in the book.

It is the story of a nameless woman in Afghanistan. She is taking care of her husband who has been in a coma for weeks after being shot. Meanwhile the fighting continues around her. She must also take care of her two young daughters, but is able to find an aunt to take care of them, and once they are gone, she begins praying less and speaking to her husband more... frankly, starkly telling him her heart about what he, and constant warfare, have done to her.

Not easy reading, but a book that should be widely read.



Translator - Mclean, Polly
Introduction - Hosseini, Khaled

Publication Other Press (2010), Hardcover, 160 pages
Publication date 2010
ISBN 1590513444 / 9781590513446

"The Patience Stone" is at once a strikingly easy book to read (since it is extremely short) and an almost excruciatingly painful read (because of the subject matter). The title of this review is actually from the book before the narrative itself, and it captures the style of the book. There are no names. Instead, the protagonist is simply "the woman" or "she." There are indeed very few specifics in the book, and the intention, fairly obviously, is to indicate that we are looking at a widespread phenomenon, that of the woman who lives subservient to nearly everyone else.

In the novella, the woman stays with her children and her husband in their house. The husband has been shot in the head but somehow has not died. He is, however, unconscious, and the woman tends to him as she can by administering eye drops to keep his open eyes moist and a liquid drip. She prays for him devoutly and, from time to time, talks to him. Before long, her prayers become shorter, and her talks longer as she begins to tell him the truth about her feelings. And these feelings are not all wonderful as she laments the treatment she has suffered as a woman, a Muslim, and a resident of the war-torn region. Her husband becomes her patience stone, the stone that, according to Persian folklore, absorbs confessions and laments until one day it explodes and the apocalypse arrives.

This is an important and powerful book. I have some minor reservations about it, particularly in the way in which one of the woman's victimizers is portrayed, but I will not say more lest I give away too much.

This little gem of a book is only 142 pages long and once I picked it up I couldn't put it down. It was originally written in French in 2008 and just recently translated. And Khaled Hosseini, who wrote The Kite Runner, wrote the introduction.

Its theme is based on the Persian myth of a magical black stone that absorbs the troubles of those who confide in it. But in this book, this stone is a human being, an Afghani man who is lying comatose in his home while his wife of 10 years and mother of his two young daughters, is taking care of him. In a long monologue she opens her heart to him and reveals truths that she has kept inside of her for too long.

She resents him, resents the war that has immobilized him, resents her whole life which has been one of subterfuge and lies. Slowly, she reveals the truth and slowly we get to know her, understand her, and identify with her, especially as some of her revelations are of an explicit nature as she talks about their marital relations. In the meantime, their world is exploding around them. There is an unnamed petty war going on, soldiers bent on death and destruction and their safety is at risk in general.

I loved the voice of the woman. I identified with her and felt real chills as she quietly cared for the man and told him her innermost secrets which kept getting deeper and more profound as the book moved along, creating a rising tension that kept my eyes wide and my heart beating until the inevitable conclusion.

I loved this book and highly recommend it.

The Patience Stone is a story-poem about an unnamed Afghani woman (everywoman) who reveals her identity as a messenger of God. Like Mohammed, she fights off her fear of possession by demons to get to the more frightening but liberating personal truth within her. She learns by self-exploration, with the help of the Koran, that revelation is the foundation of Mohammed's teachings and the teachings of hundreds of thousands of other prophets across religions and across times who have spoken of the human spirit.

Rahimi presents the reader with a dilemma: How can a Muslim woman who is subjugated by patriarchal tribal Muslim law, identifies with her mother's submission to a morality of inferiority, and uses repression to create a degrading self regard learn the power of the revelation of her own truth? It is as simple as the recurring cycle of the lives of prophets. She must reject the tribal laws of the father, deny the false morality of the mother, and give up her own socially distorted self regard. The novel describes how she solves this dilemma.

The woman's husband, a casualty of jihad, gives her the opportunity to experience the wisdom of folklore concerning sang-e saboor, the patience stone. The fable describes a smooth black stone that absorbs the words, thoughts and emotions of a person describing her personal trials, pain, disappointments, guilt, denials of the body, hatred of war, helplessness, abandonment, and victimization. Absolute trust in the privileged acceptance by the stone is required. When the catharsis is complete and the stone has actively absorbed all, it explodes revealing to the person not just the name of God, but the truth of God. The woman's wounded husband is her sang-e saboor.

The novel also puts the reader in the position of the patience stone absorbing the confessions of the woman and allows us to reach a point of disintegration, allowing us to accept God's truth in her. This is not possible for tribal Muslim men who focus only on the soul, denying in themselves and in their women the sexual demands of the body. They can blindly fight a jihad without regard for the life of the body on earth. Women must try to live a soulless life of the body to create sons who can continue the propagation of the faith. They are impure unless they deny their own independent satisfactions and focus only on the performance of the man's ability to play his part in conception. This suppression is harmful because clues about the truth are given through the body.

We learn in the novel that it is through the integration of body and soul that revelation of truth occurs for Muslim women. This is the teaching of the Koran for all people, and it is not an authorization for the abuse of women by fathers and husbands. With this interpretation, comes the understanding that the body will out, repression is a denial of the teachings of Mohammed. It is not immoral to have bodily desires in addition and connected to desires of the soul. In speaking to the patience stone all utterances and thoughts are meaningful and relevant to truth.

I strongly recommend this short novel to all readers devoted to the inner life. It shows us that as with all prophets, the woman in the story teaches us to look within ourselves for the recurring themes of life and to discover the absolute truths of existence, to become instruments of God. Muslim women (and all people) must be free to speak, think, and experience their emotions without repression. We must have unconditional acceptance of an understanding God to reject the misconceptions taught to us in the past and find the path to enlightened identities.

Over 25 years ago Robert Altman produced a movie on Richard Nixon entitled "A Secret Honor." The entire movie was one actor, portraying Nixon, sitting in one room. The movie commences with Nixon placing a bullet in the chamber of his gun, and then he proceeds to drink heavily, while he is compelled to unburden his conscious, telling his version of what really happened throughout his political career, including Watergate. The "Sang-E-Saboor," the patience stone, in his case was the tape recorder.

So, the premise which I read on my Vine newsletter was engaging; one Afghan woman, in one room, pouring out the secrets of her life to her comatose husband, who had become her "patience stone." But what I received are the writings of a male Andrea Dworkin, from the Islamic world. Though some do, I choose not to sullen the word "feminist" by calling Dworkin one; far more accurately, she was a misandrist - a hater of all men. True, she may have had ample reason, based on the tough life she experienced, but I have never seen adequately explained how she repeatedly elected to make the "poor choices" that led to her abuse. Her legacy, though, is some zinger quotes: "In seduction, the rapist often bothers to buy a bottle of wine." and "Since men have no other criteria for worth, no other notion of identity, those who do not have phalluses are not recognized as fully human." Indeed, she has repeatedly inferred that all heterosexual sex is rape. Dworkin has a coterie of followers in the West who believe she describes the reality of their lives; obviously many men, and fortunately, many women, disagree.

Enter Atiq Rahimi. Take the Dworkin world view, and place it in an exotic setting, and few are more exotic than Afghanistan. All the men, save for the narrator's father-in-law, the exception that confirms the rule, are evil, sexually incompetent and insecure, blithering idiots. The women are "long-suffering," but "game" the system and their fate. Incorporate heavy doses of Islam into the tale, as the proximate cause of all this misery. The husband has been wounded by "friendly fire," but whose cause is that "male honor thing," that is endemic in Islamic countries, unless, of course, it's Richard Nixon. Toss in some pedophilia, some almost necrophilia, and by all means, provide the ultimate revenge by cuckolding the husband, and you have a book tailored to further fan Islamophobia.

I had some other problems with the book too. Supposedly Rahimi is a Muslim, so it was a bizarre formulation to say: "It is in the Ka'bah, in Mecca! In the house of God! You know, that Black Stone around which millions of pilgrims circle during the big Eid celebrations" (p 76). Eid celebrations? Surely, he meant the Haj, or the Umrah. It's the sort of mistake a non-Muslim would make. Even more incredible, her aunt is being raped by her father-in-law (naturally), and, "Eventually she cracked. Bashed his head in" (p 91). Now you'd think she'd be executed (by stoning, naturally, again) for murder, but all they did "was throw her out of the in-laws house." Then she goes off to live in a brothel, where the narrator puts her children. What?

Khaled Hosseini's introduction also set off some unfortunate resonances: "... this novel's greatest achievement is in giving voice... Rahimi's nameless heroine is a conduit, a living vessel for the grievances of millions of women like her, women who have been objectified, marginalized, scorned, beaten, ridiculed, silenced." Isn't that what Margaret B. Jones said was the reason she wrote the fraudulent memoir, "Love and Consequences"? To give a "voice" to the nameless millions trapped in the South Central L.A. ghetto. Can't an Afghan woman, or a member of the South Central ghetto speak for themselves? And indeed, some have.

Susan Faludi has written some excellent books on the place of women in American society, including "Backlash" and "The Terror Dream." In the later book she discusses how this sudden concern for the plight of Afghan (and Muslim) women arose in the post-9-11 environment. It was a way of saying to American women: See honey, you don't have it so bad, even if you live in a country that can't pass the Equal Rights Amendment, and pays you 70% of your male counterpart; it could be a lot worse. Yes, the plight of Afghan women can be an immense distraction.

Afghanistan is a desperately poor country which has been the battleground for the two strongest military powers on earth for the last 30 years. The dysfunctional nature of any society is bound to be exacerbated under such conditions. Men, as in almost all societies, have an inordinate amount of the power there, and no doubt utilize that power in ways that are oppressive to the country's women. And yes, it is much tougher being a woman in that society than in the United States. It is also harder being a man. But to what degree should the faux concern for these women be a distraction from our own problems? I live in a city which recently uncovered the bodies of 13 women buried in a mass grave. The local newspaper worked in the sub-text that these women lived "high-risk lifestyles," you know, they deserved it (`sorta'). Another woman killed and buried her three year old child in a local playground. Afghanistan is no doubt more "exotic," but you don't have to leave your home town to find criminal, misogynistic, bizarre behavior.

America is now in its 10th year of war in Afghanistan, one that now seemingly will last in perpetuity, and critically needs a better understanding of this remote country that is quite different from our own. Regrettably the two-dimensional characters in this book do not give this to us. They merely reinforce certain stereotypical negative images of Islamic societies, and once again prove our willingness to accept the wildest caricatures of those "who live on the other side of the river," to use Blasé Pascal's phrase. And what right do we have to kill them? 1-star for the efforts to promote Islamophobia.